UPDATE: Well, it's not that we fell in the U.S. News rankings. Last year:

The University of Wisconsin-Madison ranked 13th among public institutions in rankings released today (Tuesday, Aug. 17) in the U.S. News & World Report's 2011 Edition of America's Best Colleges.

UW-Madison also tied for 45th among 262 national doctoral universities. In the 2010 edition, the university ranked ninth among public institutions and tied for 39th among national doctoral universities.

This year, we've gone up to 10th among public institutions and 42d among national universities.

fI wonder if this has anything to do with the letter that I think the Justice Department has recently sent to university departments warning them against antisemitism? I mean, wouldn't such a warning interfere with their efforts to be truly muticultural?

I heard there was an African-American, Muslim-curious, atheist, lesbian, transgender, left-handed woman that was going to drop out of the Womyn's Studies program because nobody understood her pain and/or suffering. Poof! There goes a bunch of diversity.

But my guess is that it's probably something related to the Evil Scott Walker wanting to cut some type of UW funding.

It does not say there was a threat of violence to any particular person (student, administrator, or otherwise)

It does not say there was a threat of violence to any particular group of people.

I have no idea what the threat is, but certainly the way the email is worded makes it sound like they are afraid of an idea. Somebody's going to advocate against the diversity policy! Maybe they think Gov. Walker is going to cut funding to diversity programs by 10%!

If the threat was truly terrible, why would they gather everyone up into an auditorium, where they are vulnerable to a shooting or bomb attack? Sending a communication by Facebook would be much safer and more practical.

This threat, or at least the way your university is handling it, is indeed fishy.

Battlespace preparation. She's assembling the lynch mob without informing its members who's the lynchee - and will reveal partial information only under carefully scripted and controlled staging to ensure that the Public Hating is properly directed.

As a UW-Eau Claire alum, I will never understand why the entire UW-System is obsessed with diversity. They were in my day, and they still are. When will this "diversity" folks admit the state they live in is 90 to 95% white and that's the likeliest outcome of the student population across the entire system.

Battlespace preparation. She's assembling the lynch mob without informing its members who's the lynchee - and will reveal partial information only under carefully scripted and controlled staging to ensure that the Public Hating is properly directed.

I'm loving the surely unintentional religious allegory in that sentence. Normally I would say the word "community" would equate in this context with "commune," but "in community" gives it a religious flavor. Community as communion.

We, the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences Diversity Committee, use the term "diversity" to mean the desirability and value of many kinds of individual differences while at the same time acknowledging and respecting that socially constructed differences based on certain characteristics exist within systems of power that create and sustain inequality, hierarchy, and privilege.** The College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences is determined to eliminate these forms of inequality, hierarchy, and privilege in our programs and practices. In this sense, diversity is to be actively advanced because it fosters excellence in learning, discovery, and engagement.

Added: However, we do not and will not tolerate advocacy or public expression of viewpoints that would conflict with our worthless, er, worthwhile definition of "diversity" as stated above. Whydahell do those cons think their shit don't stink, anyway?

It has come to the attention of the Administration that certain departments that lack the word "Studies" in their names have been assigning grades based on the quality of students' work, objective test results, and measured knowledge of the subject matter.

This racist, sexist, speciesist, and heteronormative policy cannot be allowed to stand. Beginning September 15, all students and faculty in the Physical Sciences, Life Sciences, Medical, and Engineering Departments will be reassigned to harvest sugar cane for a period of not less than 75 days. Cadres will attend mandatory reeducation classes in the evenings.

I s'pose I'm just getting old, but am trying to imagine what a threat to my sense of identity would look like; coming up blank. I mean, what kind of a wuss would a person have to be to be anxious about a threat to his 'sense of identity'?

I see your female identity and raise you CCU RN, wife and homeschooling Mom.

Nah, don't really want to go there. Especially since sometimes that female identity can be hard to discern.

It's a term you usually only hear in monastic Christianity. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that they were calling a prayer meeting. It's worded as a leader might call to the brothers of a monestary or to the elders of an evangelical church to come together in prayer.

I would guess that some African American is channeling the superficial trappings of her heritage, but not its substance or message.

Sounds like CEO is planning to announce a lawsuit alleging that the U discriminates against Asian and White students, so I guess the vice provost wants to pre-arrange a photogenic pro-diversity mob in time for the initial news coverage.

Affirmative Action is an evil drain on our country. My suspicion would be that many of the unqualified who have gained admission through their minority status know that without Affirmative Action they would never have been admitted. Further, without special programs and degree majors they would never survive. You bet their identity is threatened. Too many of those unqualified students probably wouldn't even make good janitors. (Actually, I would bet most of the janitorial staff is minority. That way the university can claim they have such and such a percentage of employees are people of color.)

I heard about an erstwhile resident assistant who had labeled a recycling bin "White Paper" and another "Colored Paper". Some wag changed the label to "Paper of Color", which really upset the resident assistant. She then needed to leave a note to the prankster inviting them to have a discussion about equity issues.

I can think of little justification for affirmative action. I have had students in high school who assured me they didn't need to learn the material in high school as they would get admitted to a UW school, and get the tutoring they needed once they were admitted.

This afternoon a troubling communication was brought to my attention that involves a threat to our diversity efforts. I invite you to an urgent meeting this evening at 8:00 in the MSC Lounge in the Red Gym to discuss this matter.

So if a person is a member of a favored minority or gender group, or can afford to rise above that, then one is good. Plain and simple, affirmative action has become a drag on our society, and has spawned a generation of "under-represented group" members who believe they are really pension fund babies. They will fight to defend what they have taken.

I see the NoBama administration wants more diversity in the Federal workforce. Already the Federal workforce has disproportionately fewer White Males than the population as a whole. So down-sizing the Post Office is racist because they've hired more Blacks and Hispanics than the general population. These leeches think they can suck our blood forever. "If something can't go on forever, it won't."

When I was an undergrad at UW in the 80s, there was a proposal to give free tuition to black students. I think eventually it dawned on most people that giving free tuition to middle-class blacks from Chicago was basically unfair to working-class white Wisconsinites.

But the school was providing help to black applicants on their admissions forms. And we all know that those forms ARE the most difficult part of college, especially if your major ends in the word, "studies."

Apparently Meadehouse did not attend the meeting and "George" did, or monitored the twitter flow, which one assumes Meadehouse did as well, and UW-Madison is destined to become the next test-case of affirmative action ... ?

Pat Bay said: so I guess the vice provost wants to pre-arrange a photogenic pro-diversity mob in time for the initial news coverage.

Here's what I wonder. Would the vice-provost be helped most by a group of all-white protesters (which would show that the university doesn't discriminate against whites) or a heavily diverse group (which would suggest that the university does discriminate but has such racial solidarity as a result that no one better mess with us)?

Since "diversity" in the American progressive sense is a reference to incidental features and behaviors, this can only mean that their quotas are not being met, probably due to the disproportionate hit taken by individuals who were beneficiaries of progressive policies.

On the other hand, if the office of diversity has any integrity whatsoever, then the emergency is a reference to a general decline in student enrollment, irrespective of skin color, gender, etc.

Institutional enforcement of denigrating individual dignity is truly demented and is fairly unique to America. Is it the result of "good intentions" taken to extremes resulting in the resurrection of a perverted caste system?

America has a long way to go in order to realize positive progress. Its unremarkable past is still sabotaging its efforts. Well, other than an active effort to curtail involuntary exploitation and totalitarian policies, respect male and female dignity equally, an ongoing effort to end public and private predatory and discriminatory policies, and an long-running effort to revalue human life.

Yes, there is indeed a threat to the "progressive" class of diversity. People in greater measure are correctly classifying "progressive" policies as promoting the denigration of individual dignity, which is the antithesis of enlightenment, and an entirely regressive enterprise.

Go to the web site and read Dr. Williams' Strategic Diversity Update for 2011.

It actually shows that they are very busy. They have meetings. Lots of them. At the meetings they schedule other meetings. They meet at the other meetings and learn what has transpired at still other meetings.

They have constituencies. They interface with their constituencies. They report on the interface.

They want to close the achievement gap, though they don't define exactly what that gap is. That is a worthy goal, right? But it isn't a goal, in the sense that they have a concrete diagnosis, a specific set of goals and measurable results. It's an aspiration. Nice, worthy aspiration, that they probably can't influence much because they lack jurisdiction over things like high school, and grade school and admissions standards.

I favor diversity. I really do. Our diversity and social mobility may be the thing that saves American society from it's terrible leadership.

But this department? They don't seem to be doing much.

Better if we just paid them all to go to Milwaukee and tutor grade school kids. (And demand results from their efforts.)

Why does this have some weird sort of Alice In Wonderland feel to it... The head guy is worried and everyone has to murmur and scurry with angst over something that, in the real world, would be ignored or laughed out of town... but we aren't living in the real world any more are we.

(Madison, WI) Two studies released today by the Center for Equal Opportunity reveal severe discrimination based on race and ethnicity in undergraduate and law school admissions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with African Americans and Latinos given preference over whites and Asians.

How is it that Cambridge University (my alma mater) is a world class university without all this diversity apparatus?

Am I reading the site correctly when I read

"One of the University's overarching goals is to infuse the curriculum in all disciplines with diversity, including those where traditionally it has been absent. The Ethnic Studies Requirement (ESR) is one of several key elements in reaching this goal. This is a requirement that all students take a 3-credit course that considers ethnic/racial minorities that have been marginalized or discriminated against in the U.S. Because issues of ethnic diversity and religion are often intertwined and cannot easily be separated, courses that focus only on religion may, where appropriate, fulfill the ESR.All courses that the implementation committee approves as satisfying the requirement must provide evidence that the course material illuminates the circumstances, conditions, and experiences of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States."

The link is http://www.ls.wisc.edu/gened/documents/FacDoc1736.pdf

Are there 'correct' answers to obtain these credits? Does the UW-M have formal re-education courses, or is this just something kulaks must attend?

The odds ratio favoring African Americans and Hispanics over whites was 576-to-1 and 504-to-1, respectively, using the SAT and class rank while controlling for other factors. Thus, the median composite SAT score for black admittees was 150 points lower than for whites and Asians, and the Latino median SAT score was 100 points lower. Using the ACT, the odds ratios climbed to 1330-to-1 and 1494-to-1, respectively, for African Americans and Hispanics over whites.

For law school admissions, the racial discrimination found was also severe, with the weight given to ethnicity much greater than given to, for example, Wisconsin residency. Thus, an out-of-state black applicant with grades and LSAT scores at the median for that group would have had a 7 out 10 chance of admission and an out-of-state Hispanic a 1 out of 3 chance—but an in-state Asian with those grades and scores had a 1 out of 6 chance and an in-state white only a 1 out of 10 chance.

Vice-Provost Williams is going to do for UW Madison what the unions did for Detroit.

But are Wisconsin residents going to be happy knowing their pasty white kids, especially the boys, aren't going to get into the school their taxes are helping to fund?

"Sorry son, you have to take one for the team and go out of state, although a lot of schools are doing the same bullshit there, so, well, too bad, and thanks for understanding. Maybe a private school?"

Why does 'diversity' require that the University actively discriminate by color and sex?

MarkG had this Damon Williams guy pegged correctly yesterday, based on Williams' self-written LinkedIn description. Williams is a navel-gazer who has managed to make a career of "studying" "diversity professionals" ... like himself. Here is his autobiography in full, complete with all the self-adoration and grammatical errors one might expect from an academic more interested in diversity than, er, academics:

"[I am] the consummate scholar/ administrator/ thought leader. Having worked with, consulted, or spoke [sic] at over 100 organizations [I am] widely considered one of the nations [sic] most dynamic and innovative thinkers in the areas of diversity and inclusion management, with a specific focus on college and university environments.

[My] research on chief diversity officers and inclusive excellence have been featured in publications like About Campus, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Diversity Factor, Strategic Diversity & Inclusion Magazine, the Journal of College and University Human Resource Professionals, Inside Higher Education, and others.

[My] recently published monograph on chief diversity officers, “The Chief Diversity Officer: A Primer for Presidential Leadership” was sponsored by the nation’s largest higher education policy organization and mailed directly to nearly 2000 college and university presidents.

[My] research on dedicated diversity capacity has crossed into the corporate sector. [My] much anticipated book, the Chief Diversity Officer: Strategy, Structure, and Change Management with Dr. Katrina Wade-Golden, is expected to have great impact on diversity and inclusion efforts across all areas of organizational life as [we] explicate the best practices and strategies of CDOs in the higher education, government, and corporate sectors.

Maybe it's regarding Obamas incentives to hire long term unemployed. In some instances that new bias could interfere with the established bias. Messin' with the definition. There are institutions to uphold, ya know.

After completing 3 degrees at UW Madison and later studying at the U of Miami - I wish I had gone to the U of Miami first! The weather in January is surf-tastic. The football team? Not so good. But none of the bullshit associated with Madison, not a drop.